As wind power’s contribution to the global energy transition grows, insiders are looking to improve sustainable practices within the wind industry itself. 

In the latest edition of the Wind Power podcast, Lisa Ekstrand, head of sustainability at Vestas, joins Carbon Rivers’ chief technical officer David Morgan to discuss how both companies are boosting circular economics in the wind industry by developing new ways to recycle turbine blades. 

Between 85-90% of a typical wind turbine is already made of recyclable materials like steel. However the turbine blades themselves are often made from composite materials including epoxy resin that is much harder to break down and cannot be recycled so easily. 

Numerous prominent companies in the wind industry are now exploring blade recycling in the hopes of growing it to a commercial scale and solving one of the biggest sustainability challenges the industry still faces. 

Vestas last year announced it had developed a bespoke, chemical-based process named Cetec (Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites) which it claims can effectively break down the epoxy resin “superglue” which holds blade composites together and thereby reclaim the blade materials for recycling. 

Carbon Rivers meanwhile worked with the US Department of Energy to develop its own way to break down the composite materials within wind turbine blades using a process similar to pyrolysis. 

Ekstrand and Morgan discussed why recycling turbine blades is so important for sustainability in the wind industry, and why employing the reclaimed materials anywhere they can be useful is the most important outcome when it comes to circular economics. 

This episode was produced by Czarina Deen.

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